Dear John

As we reach the close of another exciting year at CPRE I’d like to pause and take a moment to share the warm glow of some of 2021’s highlights.

With all the focus on seasonal festivities, it’s easy to forget how much we’ve achieved together this year. None of these achievements would have been possible without your support whether you’ve given us time or added your voice to one of our campaigns and I want to thank you so much for all your contributions.

In 2021:

We had a record year for Star Count, which inspired almost 8,000 of you to become ‘citizen scientists’. 

Our campaigning on rural transport influenced the National Bus Strategy’s commitment to rural users of buses, while more than 50,000 of you signed a petition supporting our calls for a reliable bus service for every village and town.

There was a major win this autumn with the government going for a rethink on its damaging planning proposals, after thousands of you signed our petition against them and wrote to your MPs. And we were given hope for better use of brownfield land when both the prime minister and housing secretary spoke positively about brownfield in the run-up to our annual state of brownfield report launch. 

In September we published ground-breaking hedgerow research in Parliament, and since then nearly 40,000 of you have joined our call to boost our hedgerows by 40% by 2050. Last month saw many of you take this demand to COP26 events, helping to win public support for countryside solutions that can help address the climate crisis. 

The need to reduce our carbon emissions has remained a central part of our campaigning throughout 2021, with some notable successes, including a government rethink on the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria (after over 10,000 of you used our online action); and a ban on burning carbon-storing peat bogs, along with government funding to restore 86,000 acres of this unique habitat. 

We hope you’ll agree that together we have achieved great success this year, and important steps towards an even better future for our countryside. Like many other charities, we too are feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. We rely on our supporters’ gifts as they enable us to continue resourcing our important campaigns today and into the future.

There’s always more to do and, with your continuing support, the first months of next year will see us back star-counting and looking to reduce light pollution, planting new hedgerows and drawing attention to the importance of local green spaces and their protection.

We’ve also been sharing the stories of supporters like you and the inspirational ways you’ve been connecting with our countryside. One of those supporter stories is from Victoria Ekpo who set up a walking group during lockdown and wrote a poem about what the countryside means to her. As Victoria says in her poem: ‘We are the countryside; you, me and every fellow here.' 

We’re so pleased to have your fellowship and we look forward to celebrating a more beautiful and more resilient countryside with you in 2022.

In the meantime, may I wish you all the joys of the season and a very happy new year.

Best wishes,

Crispin

Crispin Truman
Chief Executive
CPRE, the countryside charity